Hard Stop (30 page)

Introductions were made all around, after which we got Amanda and Eddie settled in, and spent a few hours talking things over with Burton. By then it was pretty late, so it was easy for me to slip away and drive back to Oak Point, where I sat up for another few hours and smoked a month’s ration of cigarettes, nursed a single tumbler of Absolut, listened to Etta James and pretended I wasn’t spooked by every little sound in the night.

I was back where I’d started. On Oak Point, alone in the dark.

L
ATE THE NEXT DAY
I heard a sound I’d never heard before. I was in Amanda’s pickup, which I almost ran off the road searching around the dashboard for the source, realizing eventually it was coming from my pocket.

It was my cell phone. A flashing alert told me I had a voice message waiting. I’d retrieved plenty of these before without all the frantic notification. I studied the little screen and saw that the message had been marked urgent. It was from Joe Sullivan.

“The doc was right about the brain,” he said. “Riverhead says it could have come from any slaughterhouse. They’re also working on the photograph of Amanda, but don’t expect much.”

I told him that I’d sent Amanda over to Burton’s, which made him happy. He said Will Ervin would stay close to her during the day. I thanked him.

“You were also right about unknown prints A, B and C,” he said. “Elaine Brooks, Zelda Fitzgerald and John Churchman,
owner of the property, in that order. We interviewed Churchman already, doesn’t know nothing about nothing, and why would he? He’s living on his boat, a few slips down from Hodges at Hawk Pond, if you want to waste your own time.”

I was only a few blocks from Hawk Pond, so I turned off North Sea Road and followed the creek that fed the pond that eventually flowed out into the Little Peconic Bay. First I knocked on the weatherboards on Hodges’s old Gulf Star, but he wasn’t home. In the process I stirred up his two shih tzus, whose crazed yapping attracted the annoyed attention of the next-door neighbor, a woman with round, apple-red cheeks and a cloud of white hair.

“Cute dogs, but noisier than sin,” she said, her head poking up out of the companionway of her boat, her hand shielding her eyes against the pure sun of early fall.

“Do you know which of these boats is John Churchman’s?” I asked her.

“Not that one. That’s Paul Hodges.”

“I know. He’s a friend of mine. I’m actually looking for John Churchman.”

She jerked her thumb to the left.

“Three slips down. Sportin’ Life.”

“That’s his boat?”

She shook her head.

“The boat’s name is
April 16
. The day after tax day. The guy’s an accountant. My husband calls him Sportin’ Life.”

“Your husband given to sarcasm?”

“No,” she said, lowering her voice and looking pointedly at something behind me, “jealousy.”

I turned and saw a dark woman walking down the dock. She had a towel wrapped around her head and a terry cloth bathrobe that would have fit her if she’d been half as tall.

“Excuse me,” I said to her. “Do you know John Churchman?”

She stopped abruptly, and unlike Elaine Brooks, collected the neck of her robe and gained greater purchase on a clear bag filled with bathing paraphernalia. She didn’t know whether to look suspicious or smug.

“Funny you should ask.” She looked toward her neighbor, who’d already ducked out of sight. “I’m staying with him. Who would be inquiring?”

“I’m a friend of Bobby Dobson, the one renting John’s house off Vedders Pond.”

“Johnny’s still in the shower. Exfoliating. He’ll be by in a sec.”

She moved on down the dock with the kind of sliding gait that made you think of high heels and tight skirts. I followed her.

She stepped nervously across a short gangplank and into the cockpit of a modern sailboat, all clean rounded fiberglass and chrome, not a splinter of teak anywhere. She was halfway down the companionway before she saw me walking on the dock. She waved as she descended down into the boat.

“I’d invite you in, but I lack the authority. He’ll be along soon.”

I said something inanely apologetic and sat down on a plastic storage bin chained to the fence that ran along the dock. As predicted, Churchman showed up soon after, wearing a towel and the self-possession of a crown prince.

He had a lot of hair on his chest, but you could still see it was sculpted and fat free, and well represented by his posture, which was somewhere on the extreme end of ramrod. When I stood up from the bin and stepped in front of him a smile erupted on his face that would have been
all perfectly straight, brilliant white teeth if it weren’t for the cheerful lines sketched on his cheeks and around his eyes.

“John Churchman?” I asked.

“Absolutely,” he said, thrusting out his hand.

His grip was a shade tighter than it needed to be, so I squeezed back before letting go. I expected him to be startled by that, but instead he looked impressed.

“I’m Sam Acquillo. I found the dead girl in your house.”

“How shitty was that?” he said, his face shifting smoothly into sympathy mode.

“Very. Can I bother you for a few minutes?”

“I already gave my statement.”

“I’m not a cop. The thing’s just got me bugged and I thought you might be able to help.”

He nodded, smile back in place.

“Absolutely,” he said for the second time. “Let me get decent and we’ll chitchat.” He looked at his boat. “Wait’ll you meet Brigitte. A one-woman babe-a-thon.”

“We met.”

“Lucky you. Come on.”

It took a while for him to get decent. I suppose that involved moisturizing, achieving a razor-sharp part in his straight brown hair and picking out the right outfit—a soft rayon shirt tucked with precision into a pair of pleated trousers. Brigitte came up the companionway directly behind him and put her arm around his waist. Her dress looked like it was made from the same material as his shirt, in a contrasting but nicely coordinated color. They stood there for a moment so I could take it all in.

“We’re about to have our evening drinkies,” said Brigitte. “Care to join?”

“If you got vodka and ice, sure,” I said.

Churchman patted her on the rump when she turned to go back down the companionway.

“Ever windsurf?” he asked me, after sitting down on the cushioned cockpit seat across from me.

I said no. “I like a boat around me.”

He looked disappointed.

“Too bad. I was going to suggest you move up to para-surfing. Learned it down in Cancun. Much bigger rush. I’m going out tomorrow if the wind kicks up like it’s supposed to.”

“So you live here during the season?”

He shook his head with another expansive smile, giving me a chance to see what teeth can look like under the proper management.

“Year-round when I’m in the country. Just do a short haul in the spring to paint the bottom. Usually while I’m staying at my apartment in Montmartre.”

“Quelle chance.”

“You a local?” he asked.

“My grandparents were from the
onzième
, but I’ve never been there.”

“I meant Southampton.”

“Yeah. Up in North Sea. So Bobby Dobson rents Vedders Pond full time?”

Brigitte called to him to help her with a tray piled with wine, cheese and bread, and my vodka on the rocks. He swept it out of her hand and slid it onto the cockpit table without a pause or clink of glass.

“Great tenant. Marvelous. Doesn’t know which end of a screwdriver drives the screw, but that’s what landlords are for.”

“So you don’t mind the subletting.”

“I choose to call them guests, and who cares as long as the rent is paid and there’re no problems?”

“Like a woman getting murdered?”

He wasn’t sure if I meant it as a joke, but he kept the grin when he pointed his finger at me.

“You make an excellent observation. Murder was not part of the lease.”

Brigitte used two fingers to tap his thigh, in a parody of an actual swat.

“Heavens, John. How awful.”

“You’re right,” he said, putting his arm around her as she sat down next to him. “It’s not funny.”

“John likes to laugh in the face of death,” said Brigitte. “Jumping out of planes, skiing down mountains—occasionally at the same time.”

“It’s a bad habit.”

“So no opinions on what happened?” I asked him. “No ideas?”

He looked at Brigitte as if to help him remember.

“Not really. I stay pretty clear of the place during the high season and never met the Japanese girl. One of the cops said he went to the house on a complaint and found her drunk with the music blasting and bawling like a fountain. Don’t the Japanese like to commit hari-kari when they’re bumming over something?”

Brigitte looked like she wanted to say “How awful” again, but instead she took a big sip of her white wine.

“It wasn’t suicide. The body was moved from the rear patio to a bedroom in the basement. Don’t worry. No blood. The killer was unusually tidy.”

“Then I could use him to clean up when the cops let me back into the house. They left a mighty mess.”

“How well do you know Robert Dobson?” I asked.

“I do his taxes. And the old man’s. I’ll always know if they can afford the rent.”

“Dad pays?”

“Oh, yeah. Bobby’s a bit of a disappointment financially, but he’s their kid, you know?”

Brigitte nodded briskly at this, as if she’d asserted the same position herself just that morning.

“It must be quite a responsibility knowing everybody’s dirty secrets,” I said, finishing what little vodka Brigitte fit into the thick-walled glass. A clear example of false advertising.

“Why does everyone assume there’re dirty secrets?” Churchman asked. “What’s wrong with slightly soiled?”

“What’re Bobby’s?”

“Tish-tish. I wouldn’t even tell that to the cops. Not without a court order.”

I toasted him with my glass full of ice.

“Do you believe in coincidence?” I asked him.

“Accountants don’t like statistical improbabilities.”

“Neither do engineers.”

Brigitte finally arrived with more ice, and oh joy oh bliss, a bottle of Grey Goose. French vodka. Of course.

The conversation took a sudden diversion when Brigitte told Churchman she’d screwed up on scheduling the next day’s tennis game, which might cut into his parasailing time. Though battered by disappointment, he took it well enough. She suggested a longer stint at the gym, but he thought they should get the mountain bikes back out of storage and check out the new trails being cut through the Northwest Woods above East Hampton.

I strived to look interested until Churchman remembered I was there and tried to get me into the conversation.

“What do you do for exercise, Sam? You look pretty fit.”

You could hear “for an old guy” hanging there in parenthetical midair.

“I hit things. Bars, nails and bags full of sand.”

“Sounds very therapeutic,” said Brigitte.

“If you want to try it out, I’ll set you up.”

A little shift in mood passed behind Churchman’s eyes. I took the hint and guzzled the rest of my second drink before he could say what he said right after that:

“Personally, I’m getting ready to hit Bobby Van’s.”

He patted his washboard stomach with a broad open hand as if to share the resonance of his hunger.

“Then you should go,” I said, standing up. The sun was mostly buried under the horizon by now and the resulting chill had caught up with Brigitte, who was trying to rub heat into her shoulders. Churchman pulled her to her feet and wrapped his long arms around her.

“Sorry, baby. Let’s get you a pashmina.”

I stood up and stuck out my hand for Churchman to shake.

“Thanks for the drink and chitchat, folks. Enjoy your dinner.”

I grabbed one of the split backstays and was about to swing myself up over the transom and across the gangplank when Churchman remembered something.

“Hey, Sam. I just remembered. I’ve got a client who used to work for Con Globe. It was a referral from Bobby Dobson, actually.”

I swung myself back into the boat.

“Really.”

“Yeah. Retired, like you. Your age. You gotta know him. What the hell’s his name?” he asked Brigitte, who looked panicked that she didn’t have the answer. “Funny name. I’m thinking black-and-white TV. Sixties?”

“Lucy?” Brigitte asked, exhausting her knowledge of the subject.

“Ricky’s dad. Went to work every day as a bandleader in a suit and tie. Made no sense.”

“Ozzie?” I asked.

“Christ, yeah. Oswald Endicott. Can you believe that?”

“Ozzie worked for me,” I said.

Churchman suddenly looked almost bereaved.

“Jesus, really? Well I’m the asshole.”

I hate self-flagellation. Especially when expressed by someone so unpracticed at it, like John Churchman.

“How come?”

“Well, you say North Sea, and I’m not thinking those big places up on the ridge.”

I sat back down on the cockpit cushions.

“Sorry, man. Not following,” I said.

“Ozzie worked for you? Weird bastard, but what the hey. Money’ll do that to you. What are you doing with yours? I do a little financial planning for my bigger clients. Just mentioning.”

“How much money? How much money makes you weird? Round numbers.”

He struggled with the answer.

“Eight figures? That usually gets you over the threshold. Ozzie’s comfortably inside the building.”

“We’re talking about Ozzie Endicott?”

He nodded, almost apologetically.

“Hey, you want another drink? Brigitte, get some more ice.”

I grabbed the backstay and hauled myself back on my feet.

“I’ve already taken enough of your time,” I said.

Churchman looked resigned to the inevitable, but still cheerful.

“Sure. Fine. Nice to see you. Stop by any time. Right, Brigitte?”

She nodded like it was her idea.

I found Amanda’s pickup in the dim light that filled in between the setting of the sun and the lighting of the big post lamps dotting the marina. I’d been planning to go into
the Village to buy a newspaper, sit on a park bench on Main Street, and maybe get a burger later at one of the joints that still marginally catered to the locals. But after the visit with Churchman, the mood was lost.